When you’ve got to go

Television executives always claim their rivals are struggling. But the talk from
Ten
Network’s rivals in recent weeks that it was losing share in the television advertising market and missing its budgets appears to have been accurate.

Yesterday’s dramatic sacking of chief executive
Grant Blackley
just 10 weeks after he was promoted from head of the TV division to the top job and the release of dismal February-half earnings numbers revealed how badly Ten was performing.

Its TV network’s revenue grew just 2 per cent, to an undisclosed number, during the February half compared with an estimated 6 per cent rise in the capital-city TV ad market.

Ten’s TV earnings will be down 16 per cent, reflecting the costs of its new, low-rating evening news programs and its six-week-old digital channel, Eleven, which is rating well.

The Ten board was startled by the January TV ad market revenue numbers from information company SMI, which showed Ten had a 23.7 per cent share of the big media agencies’ TV ad bookings.

Ten usually has a low revenue share in January because it lacks big-rating sport programs. But the 23.7 per cent share was lower than anyone expected. Changes had to be made. The Ten board decided the first change was to fire the chief executive.